School has this ability to negate my preconceptions of the general goodwill of people, bury my passion for everything that is not profitable, and induce a certain behavioral pattern that involves feeling depressed in the early mornings and guilty for not making a trip to the gym in the evenings.

I find myself being acquainted with terms like “methods” (usually the direct and indirect), “balances”, “traits”, “models”… etc. and slowly I am reduced to a paragraph in the textbook as being an agreeable person with typified traits like being passive and making popular decisions. Before this, I never knew I could be explained.

I scour through my books searching for an answer to my destiny, in which I find only deadlines and definitions. I turn on the TV to discover that she’s died in a car accident at 28 years old.I talk to Elvin and Margaret to discover that he’s in a coma and reacting violently to visitors he recognizes.I receive a call from Loke Wei and we spoke to each other for an hour. I felt as though he was still on his bed beside the window on Robin Road. I am still here. But he’s on the other side of the globe.

And in the lapse between sleeping and awaking, I felt – nothing.And then I fell asleep.